Catching Thunder
by tartan robes
Summary: Their hearts, like the house, are no strangers to storms. A meditation on the rain. Some, mainly vague, season three spoilers.
1. Chapter 1

**I. BEGINNINGS AND PREFACES**

The family is out and the main floor is silent. All he can hear is the rain. It's an absent sort, a calm tapping that fades, easily, in the background, merges with the ticking of the clock, the occasional crack of sheets being snapped and pulled across beds.

There is work to be done, but not immediately, and so he is allowing himself the briefest of indulgences. The library is as still as the rest of the house, perfumed by ancient pages and embroidered with hard, leather spines. He thinks, perhaps, it is his favourite room in the entire estate. He lifts a finger to the nearest shelf, browsing the titles carefully. Mrs. Hughes had teased him – he believes that is the right word – for his last choice. "_Pride and Prejudice_," she had said, "now that does sound like your sort of book, Mr. Carson." He hadn't pressed her on exactly what she had meant by that, hadn't had the opportunity to. She's become, he thinks, rather fond of walking away, sliding right through his fingers. "Do you fancy yourself," she had said another night, "much like Mr. Darcy?" He had turned away from that question too. "There is no fault," he had said, "in reading Austen, Mrs. Hughes."

"No, certainly not. Especially if you learn something from it."

He should have asked her what she meant by that. He muses over it, fixates on it, as the titles and spines become a meaningless slur of colours and shapes. She doesn't fancy such novels, not truly. Her preferences lie in other fields; he has seen her read _Dracula _more than once in all their decades together. Perhaps he ought to consult the record book, see what she has signed out as of late. His head turns. The windows in the library and drawn wide, though no much light is coming in. There isn't much, not beyond the grey sky and endless cover of clouds. There is a dimness and there is the easy rhythm of rain – and there she is, too, in all black, a hand resting against the frame.

The books are forgotten. He approaches her from behind. There is only the rain and feeling of silence pressing against his lungs and the stillness of the library. Not a page moves. His shadow reaches her first, covering her in a way that only makes her darker, covering her in a way he'd dare not touch her ever (not yet, not outside dark nights when his mind strays), and her head tilts. He catches a glimpse of her profile, a small smile. Her face seems brighter in the bleakness of the room, but the crossing takes forever. Perhaps he is weighed down with all the wetness and the water. His bones feel like heavy piping, anchors, and there is a lethargy – age? – in his stride.

"It's raining, " she says when he finally comes to her side. Her eyes stare out the window. And he wonders whether she is looking at the looming clouds or the foggy horizon line or the rain – or the spaces between the rain. He could never say, not with her. The landscape is all together much too blue. _It's raining_. She isn't saying this, he knows, simply to say it. She isn't so frivolous with her words. They're much more measured, much more careful. It's an invitation. She wants him to speak.

"It's still rather light," is what he comes up with, "it may clear up yet."

* * *

He prefers the rain like that, light, but present. Not harsh or hard, but dark and there. It's calming, one might say, but that's not why.

He is thinking of a different night, one long ago when his bones were lighter and he smiled more freely and hers were not as small. It comes to him, as most memories do nowadays, in a blur of feelings and images. He strings them together as best he can. Night air and kindling burned into his jacket, her face still seeming orange in the dark, still illuminated by the firebreather. It had been at the fair, with all its noise and cauldron of people, feelings, emotions bubbling between carnival games and bright lights. It was the sort of affair he had been careful even then, especially then, to stay away from. It was too much, he had always thought, like a past life. In the evening dark all the faces looked too familiar and all the grounds spread out like one infinite stage.

He hadn't meant to go. That's another detail he is quick to remember. He hadn't wanted to go but there had been begging from some of the younger maids and pleads from the footmen and the butler had conceded that yes, Catherine and Edward could go to the fair, but only if they were accompanied by their peers and superiors. He shifted, he remembers that too, in his seat, prepared himself to make his excuses.

She had spoken first. She was always quicker than him. Younger too, he had always credited her advantage to that. But she had also seemed older, at times, in different ways. Maturity wrapped around her like a coat, something that was there and present and commanding without being aging. Some peculiar sort of armour. She had said that yes, she would accompany the party and then glanced across the table to meet his eyes.

Perhaps that had been an invitation too. He's not sure. His memory clouds and wanes. She had looked at him often in those days. Not like that, never like that, he's always quick to amend. They hadn't spoken as much, but they had seen each other. Recognized something in each other. There hadn't been a need to speak. Silence has always been easy between the two of them.

He likes to think, now that he is old and sentimental and allowed to think such foolish thoughts (so long as he keeps them in the farthest recesses of his heart), that they were friends before they were friends. A silly, nonsensical statement, but one he has accepted as a truth regardless.

She had said yes, so he had too.

He doesn't remember the walk. He remembers stepping into the noise and the shadows and looking for her. He remembers finding her standing before a firebreather. Her face all light, all warmth and glow. (He still sees it sometimes, when she smiles or frowns in concern or looks at him in the same way they first did.) It didn't leave her that night. He remembers when it started to rain, suddenly, wordlessly, without thunder or ceremony. They had looked around, the two of them, and seen no one else. Had she whispered or had he shouted? He cannot remember. They had decided to head back.

He remembers a seizing of fear. Of the repercussion of coming back together? Of coming back without Edward and Catherine and the rest of them? Of being alone? Of saying the wrong things? All of them.

He doesn't remember what he said to her on that long walk back home. But he remembers the steadiness of the rain, present and there without hurting, and the dark blue of the sky. He remembers water sliding down her neck and the way her hair twisted, falling gently out of place. She had looked forward, into the horizon and the silhouette of the estate and the future, he remembers thinking. She always looked forward, always would. And smoke and fire had clung to both of them, him in wordless puffs and her in some crackling determination.

It hadn't been heavy rain, but it had been steady and sometimes that's what really gets you in the end. It got them then. He remembers her coat darkening, soaking through. And he remembers taking off his own coat, holding it out and over her. A tent as dark as the sky.

"I'm quite alright," he remembers her saying. "I don't mind the rain."

"You'll catch a cold."

A smile or a sigh. Perhaps both. His memory is kinder some days more than others. "Always a gentleman, aren't you?"

* * *

Later she tells him that she knows, they both know, perhaps the whole world knows, he is no gentleman. They lock a door. And for a moment, the briefest of moments, before she opens her mouth, before she speaks of secrets and things they oughtn't to know, he remembers. And he thinks of taking off his jacket.

* * *

_So, I've just written out this entire thing. For easier reading, it's going to be divided into four parts, which I may just upload all together right now. I'm not sure. Uh, anyway, this story is really super aimless and doesn't have much of a purpose. It just sort of came to me and I needed to process it by writing it and it can serve as... something, while I work on finishing up all my other projects. Yeah._


	2. Chapter 2

**II. AND THINGS FARTHER BEHIND**

"I'd rather it didn't," she says, frowning slightly. "I prefer it when it rains properly. If it's going to storm, it ought to storm, Mr. Carson. Thunder and lightning and all of it."

She tilts again, catching his profile, the heavy eyebrows and the stern gaze. This is his face, she finds herself thinking, without electricity or lamplight or candles. This is his face. She has seen his face, all its angles and edges, every new line, in all sorts of light. Sometimes, he still manages to look different, but never a stranger. He is never that.

"It ought to rain," she says again, "or it ought not to. One or the other."

* * *

It's the in-between weather she hates the most. Not the same sort of in-betweens she knows Mr. Carson hates. Right and wrong, black and white. It's not like that. It's just in-between days. Days that come out more like slush. Days that have the heaviness without the strength and finality of a storm. Days that are harder to shake off than just a drizzle.

Days like standing at the doorway, staring into Joe Burns' smile as he tips his hat and gathering her coat in her arms, saying, "I was going to meet you in the village." And having to turn her face when he kissed her cheek, willing him to miss, willing it all, every touch and every look to slide off her skin. And having to take his hand, rough and hard, but, god, knowing that it fit with hers so well. Not perfectly. No glass gloves or slippers, but well, workable and warm. Knowing that he was squeezing her hand while she was practicing letting go.

In-between days when you know you don't feel how you're supposed to feel, when it's not enough. When there's love, but not enough to plant and sow and harvest, not enough for a farmhouse. She had hugged him and, hesitantly, he had taught her, she had taught herself, how not to be afraid. It had stormed, thunder and fire, back home, a home dawns and eons away. It had stormed, but it hadn't with him. And she had learned how to reach out, hesitantly, and grab his hand. And she had learned how to press her lips against his or place her palm against the side of his face, run a thumb against his beard. Texture and sweat and a previous home, a previous life.

And she had loved to the best of her ability, but it hadn't been love at all. Not then.

And he had waited, but he would always have to be waiting longer.

In-between days when it starts to rain in the middle of her words, when she has to walk back up to the house alone, not sure if she's crying or not. In-between days when she feels awful, but knows she's not wrong. In-between days when she looks over her shoulder and he's still there, always there, standing alone in the middle of the path.

And she has to stretch her fingers wide and shake the ghost of his palm from hers.

(And none of it, none of the rain and the water, had washed any of it away. Not at first, not soon enough.)

* * *

And the problem, she thinks, with in-between days, is that they all blur into one. That the same day she is standing in her bedroom, tucking away letters and staring out the window, perhaps Mr. Carson is staring out another one, his livery not feeling too big for the first time in years. (And gassy lights and a fog of applause not plaguing his mind when he closes his eyes.) That perhaps, on that same day, some indistinguishable day, a day felt rather than lived, they were both staring out into the yard and sighing, and breathing, and feeling all the weight in the world beginning to leave their bodies.

And telling themselves, looking behind them, into the expanse of Downton's caves and halls, telling himself, telling herself, with the sureness they've both always had, _This is what's best for me_.


	3. Chapter 3

**III. AND THINGS THAT ARE NOW**

"I've had enough of storms for the time being," he says and it occurs to him that perhaps they are speaking in riddles. They have a habit of that too, of skirting around what they mean to say, saying statements in the place of feelings. She looks nice today. She looks healthy today. Her eyes match the sky and she looks alive and just like that night at the fair, by the fire, in the rain. (Beautiful, lovely, those are the words he won't say.) _I'm tired of storms; I'm thinking of you._ (But these are things he barely even acknowledges himself. These thoughts slide together like the rain, in the background, present but not thought of.)

She nods. And perhaps it isn't riddles, but a code. Because she understands, when she looks at him, he knows she does. She always does.

* * *

How many storms have there been?

Her body giving up and her hand lodged in the doorway, clinging to that awful in-between, that space between illness and health and life and death. And the darkness, the snake of black, black clouds that had followed Her Ladyship, hung over ever last one of them the night Lady Sybil died. If Downton was a tree, she thinks it would have been uprooted by now. Shaken out, black earth in a salt circle at its feet. But that's the beauty of the storm – it ends. It ends, not a first and sometimes not for a very long time, but it does and you learn how to come out of hiding and how to breathe again.

They have been walking through storms for thirty years, maybe more (and the tinier storms, the moments when she thought her heart would burst, when it felt or yearned, another way, another life, another moment, his hand over hers) and they are still learning how to breathe – around each other, with each other.

* * *

Or maybe they are the storms. The anger and frustration and the fights. There have been so many of them lately – and perhaps that's why they are simply breathing now, not speaking. They are learning. Maybe they are the storm. He in all his thunder, his words and rules he clings to. The way he is, some days, all talk, sound and fury.

If he is the thunder, then she must be the lightning. Faster and harsher and a series of quips and teasing jabs. Does it sting sometimes? She expects it must, but never too long. Never burns, just flashes.

Perhaps they are storms and they're dancing around each other, and the rain has turned into thunder and lightning for want of some sort of action, for something to be said. They don't have the language yet, only the sounds.

They're learning.

* * *

(Storms don't apologize, they simply subside. They go away and there is an understanding it is over, and it is forgiven, and then there is sun and flowers growing in the wind and perhaps they are storms. Shouts and jabs, but the wine is laid out every evening and always poured out into two glasses.)


	4. Chapter 4

**IV. AND THINGS THAT WILL BE**

"Perhaps," she concedes. Her hand trails down the window, mapping out their reflections, the faint ghosts staring abck to them, fragments of her eyes and his shoulders, and all the rain behind them.

"It doesn't matter much, does it, Mr. Carson?" She says after another pause, "you wouldn't go out into a storm like this, would you?"

The in-between rain is changing. He thinks of wine in the evenings, he thinks of his coat held over her head. He thinks of all they have walked into so far. He thinks of her, her face turned to him, her eyes looking at him as if it's the first time all over again, the glow still somewhere in her face, hiding at the edges.

He thinks that he will have to be like her, looking forwards. That sometimes, there is only forwards. That that's the only way they can move, want to move.

He thinks of her.

"I don't know, Mrs. Hughes, I may surprise you yet."

She smiles and he sees the fire and the warmth, all the things the rain tries to hide.

* * *

The window is left thrown open and they stand facing the bookshelves, no longer hearing the rain, but hearing it louder than before. He flips through the records, carefully, when he thinks she isn't looking. Tries to memorize the books she's read, the books that, one day, he'll read. And then her hand is skimming his, careful not to touch it, not yet, maybe one day, and placing _Frankenstein _above the lines where their handwriting sits, one signature on top of the other.

"You'd like this one," she says.

He takes it, carefully into hands and she watches him. One day he will surprise her, but not every day. He doesn't need to.

One day, they'll open those books a little farther and surprise each other.

One day, they'll walk out into the rain and surprise themselves.

* * *

_So, um, yes. This was a little bit different than what I usually write, I think. A weird, different style thing going on here. And wow, this was super aimless. But hopefully, if you did read it all, you didn't feel like it was a huge waste of time. (And, uh, sorry if you did?)_


End file.
